A Soldier Died Today...

Connie Francis shares respect and stories of Veterans through song.

 

By: Gina Kay Singerhouse

Editor

 

   She just sat there in the pew in the church she grew up.  It was a beautiful October day and she just can not believe where she is.  There she sat next to her husband and behind her mother.  With a gentle hand upon her mother’s shoulder she listens carefully as the preacher tells just a bit of his story.

   Statistics and nothing more.  The date of his birth, the date of his death, his siblings, his children and his grandchildren.  Statistics and nothing more.

   But in her heart she wants to scream, for he had done so much more!  Just six months before, he told his story.  One of the most difficult interviews she had ever done in her career as a journalist was to interview her own father about the war he had served.

   Now six months later, she sits starring at his adorned coffin listening to her brother tell his story.  If only her brother knew what she knew of how gallantly he served. Her brother was not there, when she had interviewed their parents about the war.

   Eighth of eleven children, that's his family.  Some have gone to heaven before him and the rest sit in this church today.  He had watched his brothers march off to World War II, while he stayed behind in support of his mother.  Soon, it was his time to serve as he was called off to the war of his generation, Korea.

   Records show that he was a Sergeant First Class.  But in his own words, he had earned the rank of First Sergeant.

  The words still haunt her as in her mind’s ear, she hears her father say, “God will never forgive me for what I did over there.”

   As the funeral ends and the procession begins it’s twenty-four mile journey, people don’t even stop to stare. A car cuts into the procession with no respect at all. Again she wants to scream.  Don’t you people know - my father, a soldier died today!

   After the war, he came home and served his country again.  A dairy farmer, producing milk to feed this country he had fought for.  His wife was deemed barren and it broke his heart.  But soon, again, he would serve his country once more.  A foster parent he came to be for over 750 children, he loved and adored.  Three is what they would adopt and three grandchildren is what they would produce.

   He lived a good life and only a handful of people knew what he had done.  She watched as they laid his coffin in his final resting place.  He had picked it, next to his mother in a town where he had grown up.

   Again, she wanted to scream!  People, don’t you realize that we laid to rest my father - a soldier today?  But the news papers and television shared only the deaths of an actor, a football player and a politician that day.  He had served his country, not once, not twice but three times and more!  Isn’t that what President Kennedy asked so many years before?

   Today she still mourns his death.  But more so, the world had lost a great soul.  For another soldier died and no one cared to know.

 

   In 1987, a very poignant poem called “Just A Common Soldier (A Soldier Died Today)” was published by author A. Lawrence Vaincourt. The powerful poem struck a chord in one’s heart as the author tells the story of a soldier who gave his all, but get’s nothing in the end...

Strictly Country will be closing soon. If you would like a copy of this article, please CLICK HERE and select the May / June 2014 issue.

(This article was printed in the 11th Annual Memorial Day Honors Special Issue of Strictly Country Magazine, 2014.)

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